


Acquiescence

by De Orakle (Delphi)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Drama, Established Relationship, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Loyalty, M/M, Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-01
Updated: 2001-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-12 05:09:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/De%20Orakle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To what lengths will Albus indulge Severus, and what would Severus do in return?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Acquiescence

**Author's Note:**

> Exact date of publication unknown.

**1.**

Would you let me sleep here tonight, Professor?

The chair, the floor, it doesn't matter. I can curl up anywhere. Just don't turn me out of this wonderful room that's all soft light and hot tea. The night outside looks terribly cold, and after giving up all of my secrets to you, I'm not certain that I have enough in me to weather it.

But what can I say to convince you to let me stay? That I'm a nineteen-year-old spy who's afraid to go home? That I've nothing waiting for me but a draughty flat haunted by a few sticks of furniture and an icebox full of the odds and ends of Indian take-away? You'd likely pack me up for St. Mungo's psychomancy ward if I tried to explain how the ceiling is white and the walls are cream and the carpet is beige, and some nights that alone is almost enough to tempt me into bloodletting just to see some colour.

And besides, I don't want your pity. I may be your terrier by day, but damned if I'm going to beg for a spot at the foot of your bed at night.

It's only that I am so very tired. I don't think I sleep anymore. I'm tired beyond all belief, and I need this secret safety of our meeting to hold just a little longer, letting me pretend that I'm one of the children you're protecting from people like me. I need to lie down with my back to the door and fall asleep knowing that I'm doing the right thing. I need just a few hours more where I don't have to be terrified of tripping up on my own paranoia.

I know. My addiction to the sanctuary of your company is going to be the death of me. And perhaps the death of you as well.

But.

Just for tonight, if I can bring myself to ask, would you let me rest easy?

Please.

* * *

"There we are, my boy. All settled in?"

"Mmm—ahem, yes...thank you, Professor."

"Not a bother, not a bother at all. In fact, with the temperature dropping so quickly, I wouldn't feel right about letting you take the boat across to Hogsmeade alone. Are you certain the cot is all right for you?"

"Yes, yes, I'm good."

"I know you are, Severus."

"..."

"Goodnight, Severus."

"Goodnight, Professor."

 

 **2.**

I want to stay the night.

I know, I know—I've slept over as often as pride and circumstance has allowed in the past year, but even you must know that "stay the night" means something else entirely with us young ones. Not to insinuate that you are...

I only mean that...

I'm terrified.

I'm terrified because it has been so long since I've had another's hands on me that I don't think my body is my own anymore. I dream about sharp metal that glitters, and His favourites...how they gaze at Him with such burning adoration even as the milk-white venom oozes from their wounds. I wake up with the sheets sticking to my thighs, not knowing what attentions my body may soon force me seek out.

And you—you look at me sometimes when my hands and voice are shaking with the effort of pretending that the things I'm telling you are nothing but a fiction. You look at me as though you want to comfort me as you would a child and then think better of it. Then your fingers twitch where they lie in your lap.

I think that you want to touch me.

I think that I want you to.

Listen to me: I, I, I—me, me, me. But I would make it good for you too. I would do anything that you wanted me to; I could take anything that you doled out. I would lie back and let you take a whip to me, if that's what does it for you, and then I would beg for more because I know that afterwards you would smooth back my hair and let me fall asleep by your side.

But.

There is always a "but" in the life of Severus Snape. Because once upon a time I was a student here, unbearded when your own had already greyed, and you are a good, decent man to whom that means something. And so you smile at me sometimes as if you regret and accept all at once.

Do you fancy I'll be your ruin?

Strange that, when I'm so certain you could be my salvation.

* * *

"I didn't mean the cot. I meant the bed. With you. If you'd like."

"Ah, Severus, I think. Well, that's certainly..."

"Albus Dumbledore, at a loss for words. Is an indecent proposal all it takes?"

"It's much more complicated than that, Severus."

"But it doesn't have to be. You and I, nothing leaving this room. No one else would ever have to know."

"I am not in the habit of taking to my bed anyone of whom I am ashamed."

"Ah. Very well. Of course. My apologies, please, just forget—"

"Severus, hush."

"...

"...

"...oh."

"Oh, indeed."

"...mmm...oh...just...Professor? You know you needn't be...you needn't...be so gentle with me."

"Severus, I would happily grant you that if I thought for a moment you truly meant it."

"I do mean it. I'm not—"

"Severus, it's all right. It's all right, now."

 

 **3.**

So leave.

Leave me alone.

I don't want to see you, or anyone, tonight. I don't want to celebrate with the masses, and I don't want to mourn with you.

There is life once again, you say with that look in your eyes. And I know that like the foolish crowds who rally outside, you too have fallen in tragic love with history rewritten to cast men as martyrs and infants as saviours.

Don't touch me. Just leave me be. I can't even stand the sound of your breathing right now.

So go. Go take care of it, that _child_ who has accomplished more in a single night than our side could in over a decade. Oh, he's Potter's son all right, with the adoring eyes of the world upon him, and while I can pity him the loss of doting parents like James and Lily, the boy will never be wanting for love.

Little bastard—our mudblood messiah.

It doesn't matter if it was Lily who sacrificed herself for her child; this shining new era will need its golden calf. And an infant vanquishing the Dark Lord just makes that much better a story at the pub, doesn't it.

They truly believe that Voldemort is gone. They _need_ to believe that He's gone.

Well, my tattoo may have vanished from sight, but I can still feel it under my skin, alive in my blood, waiting to resurface. I'm not naive enough to believe that it will be any different with Him.

Go then, Albus. Take care of your Boy Who Lived. Leave behind your boy who survived.

* * *

"Severus—"

"Just go."

"If you will only listen for a moment—"

"Go, or I will. And I don't know if I will be coming back."

"I see. Very well, then. May I return in the morning?"

"I—no—I apologise, Albus. I had no right to say that. Hogwarts is your home, not mine."

"You know that's not true. Sit back down; get some rest if you can. I will see you in the morning, my boy."

 

 **4.**

Tell me who he is and why he's better than me.

Who is this _Quirrell_ , whom you believe to be more qualified to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts than one who survived as a traitor to the Dark Lord himself.

What is it? Are you afraid that I'll be _tempted_ , surrounded by reminders of what a gifted wizard can do? Or are you afraid for yourself, that people will notice that it's a very short walk from your bedroom to the Defence classroom; that they will wonder just when Severus Snape made the transition from student to lover, and if the two ever overlapped.

Well, we both know that's rubbish, and that's always been enough for us.

Do you know that when I was young, we called Defence Against the Dark Arts an owl class, because you could just glide right through it? Granted, the textbook had gory pictures that kept us up at night, but when exams came around, it was all a cut-and-paste memory job. None of us cared. None of us really believed in it, save a foolish few who were blinded by the shine of romantic glory in the old tales of Aurors.

And look what became of us.

So tell me truly, Albus, which is worse? To raise a generation of wolves, or to turn out yet another flock of lambs to be led to the slaughter? False propriety ill suits you, Albus. Cast it aside and do what you know is right.

Will you do that for me?

* * *

"We are not discussing this again."

"Albus—"

"Severus, I have never used my authority as headmaster over you as a lover, so I wish that you would not use your authority as a lover over me as headmaster."

" _Headmaster_ , you know that no one can teach that class as I can."

"I do know that, but terrifying the children into paranoia will not erase the past."

"That is not what this is about."

"It is, whether you realise it or not. Severus...if you ever had penance to fulfill, you did so long ago. You have a rare gift with Potions and you will make a fine teacher. But you must remember, teaching is a profession as well as a calling. There must be a line, even a dotted one, between your professional and private lives."

"And if I said that it was Defence Against the Dark Arts or I look elsewhere?"

"Then I would tell you that I love you, but that I truly believe the children will be better served by another teacher."

"..."

"Severus?"

"And if...as Potions master, I were to demand exclusive use of the east dungeons?"

"Then I would happily give you the west as well."

 

 **5.**

And if I asked you to fuck me in the Transfiguration classroom...?

If I asked you very nicely?

Would you keep me after class, sit me down and peer over your spectacles at my grades? Lay your hand on my thigh...bend me over Teacher's desk?

Yes, I know that it's dangerous ground for a fantasy to tread, ground that just may resemble the checked carpet outside of your office where generations of children have stood wringing their hands with thoughts of juvenile crime and punishment.

Has five years of working as your peer at Hogwarts been enough time for you to realise that this has nothing to do with you as headmaster or me as your student, and everything to do with the two of us as lovers? Can you play your part with that twinkle in your eye and with enough heat that we might forgo the guilt?

Because...because I got my first real hard-on in that very classroom, aged twelve years, with the textbook draped strategically over my lap, deadly certain that if my prick didn't explode then my head surely would.

Because the pleasure and the shame of that memory stayed rooted in me through the years, tangling up with fantasies of young Professor Shaheed—only a substitute for one term, and yet I can still remember the low flush that filled me every time he leaned over my desk—and with excerpts from the dog-eared copy of _Lights Out at St. Peter's_ that Jay Crowley sold me for a month's worth of Arithmancy homework in fourth year.

Because when I look back on the Severus who smiled sometimes and even blushed on occasion, who thought the world would end over paltry adolescent concerns and yet never fathomed the gravity of a Faustian deal sealed with a tattoo...I don't hate him so much anymore. And when you wake me from my nightmares, kissing away the itch that burns just under the skin of my forearm, I know that you never hated him at all.

Because I've never told any of that to anyone but you.

* * *

"Stop it."

"Stop what?"

"Stop. Laughing. At. Me."

"I'm sorry, my dear, I'm—ahem—terribly sorry. I've merely never had the pleasure of seeing you...fall off of a desk before."

"I remembered it being a lot bigger."

"We _are_ still talking about the desk, aren't we, Severus?"

"Wisecracking doesn't become you."

"Do you need a hand up?"

"I'm fine where I am."

"Severus, you do realise that Minerva is going to turn us both into stoats."

"Most definitely."

"Severus..."

"Yes, Albus?"

"Would you like me to...look over your exam again?"

 

 **6.**

And would I die for you?

Not, "Will I align myself with your cause?" Nor, "Will I give my life for yours?"

But would I walk into certain death just because you asked it of me.

That is the question.

Because this will be the death of me, whether I survive it or not. I will take everything that I am, everything that I've become, and hide it in the deep, dark shadows behind the mask of who I once was. And I may never be able to get it back. That is what you are asking of me.

Would I die for you, Albus?

* * *

"Severus...you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready...if you are prepared..."

"I am."

"Then, good luck."

 

 **7.**

How could I refuse you? You who have never denied me anything.


End file.
